(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.5068) [ukfortran] WG5 ballots

[Malcolm Cohen]

>Please answer the following question "Is N1983 ready for forwarding to
>SC22 as the DTS?" in one of these ways.
>
>1) Yes.
>2) Yes, but I recommend the following changes.
>3) No, for the following reasons.

No.

Reason 1: With the introduction of cross-team access and synchronisation, the 
TEAM concept has become too complicated and unwieldy.  Those who need cross-team 
access and synchronisation issues are, IMO, better served by using simple arrays 
of image numbers - lots of discussion at the meeting was about manually aligning 
the teams and coarrays and image numbers, and all that just goes away if you use 
image number lists (and it is far from clear that the new facilities invented 
out of whole cloth at the meeting satisfy the concerns expressed - my impression 
is certainly that they do not).

Reason 2: There needs to be an explicit memory model for atomics so that users 
are clearly told if and when causality may be violated and vendors are clearly 
told what the requirements are on their implementation.  Handwaving it all away 
as "processor dependent" is a disservice to everyone - some of the users will 
think that some rational rules apply, and some of the vendors will provide 
facilities that don't obey those apparently-rational rules (reasonable people 
might differ on whether particular rules are "reasonable"!).

>4) Abstain.

Cheers,
-- 
................................Malcolm Cohen, Nihon NAG, Tokyo.